The World - News from Nov. 10, 1986

The police chief in India’s Punjab state said that 173 of the 249 infiltrators killed this year by Indian border police on the frontier with Pakistan were unarmed laborers from Bangladesh, not spies or Sikh terrorists. Chief Julius F. Ribeiro told a news conference that of the other 76 killed, 29 were Indians, including 19 Sikhs, and the rest Pakistanis. Punjab police are not responsible for border security, and Ribeiro was disputing charges by Sikh politicians that his units have killed innocent Sikhs along the frontier. Bangladesh, a Muslim nation on the opposite side of India from Pakistan, was part of Pakistan from 1947 until 1971.